Der Forscher, der eine komplexe Struktur verstehen will, ist gut beraten, wenn er sich in die Rolle eines solchen Demiurgen versetzt und sich vorstellt, er hätte sie selbst konstruieren müssen. Natürlich muss er dafür eine begründete Vermutung haben, was sie leisten soll. Leistung schließt immer eine Zielvorgabe ein, die Arbeit des Demiurgen läuft also naturgemäß im Rahmen einer telischen Heuristik ¹ ab.

N. Bischof (in prep, S. 143)

The researcher who wants to understand a complex structure is well advised to put himself in the role of such a demiurge and imagine that he would have had to construct it himself. Of course, to do this he must have an educated guess as to what it should perform. Performance always includes a target, so the demiurge’s work naturally runs within the framework of a telic heuristic.

Scenario: The environment has two sources (food and water), in a substantial distance from each other. The donkey has a general metabolism that continuously consumes food and water reserves in the body. As soon as one of the two reserves in the body drops to zero, the donkey dies.

(Simplifying) assumptions:

• Linear decrease in both water and food reserves in the body, higher under activity (e.g., traveling).
• No other needs or tasks (e.g., no predators, no sleep necessary).
• Eating, drinking, and traveling takes a substantial amount of time.
• The donkey has a representation of the environment and knows where the two sources are.

Task: Construct an organism, with as few assumptions as possible, that survives as long as possible. Which constructs / sensors / abilities are necessary for this?

Deliverable: A markdown text file with a verbal description of the organism. Give it the version number 0.1.0 (cf. Semantic Versioning).

→ Assume realistic capabilities, which respect the evolutionary path dependency.

E.g., don’t assume …

• Mammal organisms that need 3 hands to perform a task
• Omniscient knowledge about the environment, probabilities, distant events, the future, …
• Unlimited cognitive processing capabilities (“In the first 2ms, the simulated amoeba performs a multidimensional Bayesian optimization task”)

Consider the underlying psychological research question: How can an organism solve an approach-approach conflict?

Task: Sketch your initial verbal model in the style of Bischof. Refine and extend where necessary, e.g.:

• Think about which sensors are necessary (both towards internal states and towards the environment) and which actors are necessary
• Give a label to every variable (i.e., every arrow in the graphical model).

Deliverables:

• Draw the model collaboratively in draw.io. In one corner, add the version number 0.2.0 and today’s date (simply as a text box).
• Export the model as an xml file and push it to your group’s Github repo.
• Write a meaningful commit message, e.g. Initial commit; model version 0.2.0